I see that BBC continues to echo Hamas PR by stating “More than 1,900 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in four weeks of Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip, the UN says” Where does the UN get these figures, BBC? Since you claim to be all about investigative journalism, I am sure you would seek to be sure of your sources. Or, is it just possible that along with the UN, you have a predetermined narrative that requires Israel being portrayed as the bully?

Excellent analysis of the OUTRAGEOUS pro Hamas bias from BBC journalist Jon Donnison on BBC Watch. Do read.

Clearly Jon Donnison remains on Hamas PR campaign message, promoting context-free images and descriptions of damage and civilian suffering without even a whiff of a mention of terrorist activity in Beit Hanoun. His promotion of a non-existent “military occupation” of the Gaza Strip and of the notion of farmers unable to export their agricultural produce because of a “blockade” he fails to explain also conforms perfectly with the Hamas narrative currently being vigorously promoted. The fact that there is no truth to those notions obviously does not disturb Jon Donnison – or his employers – in the least.

Donnison, Douchet, Bowen – the BBC can sure pick them.

Another Thursday and another episode of ‘The Honourable Woman’.

The acting’s still abysmal, though ‘Julia Walsh’,  ‘Shlomo’ and the hang dog ‘Sir Hugh Hayden-Hoyle’ are fun to watch as they ham it up shamelessly.

The rest of it, including the storyline, so complicated for such a simple tale, is nothing to rush home for.

The whole series is an anti-Israel screed, subtly agitating against the existence of a ‘State of Israel’, promoting instead a one-state solution but there were some nice anti-Semitic touches in this episode that must have played well with some.

We had one character called ‘Yaniv Levi’ described as that ‘horrible, horrible Israeli terrorist’ (there are of course so many of those)….whilst the Palestinian ones were all conflicted and anguished, driven to do ‘horrible things’ by dire circumstances forced upon them by the cruel world.

Levi was made to look as unattractive as possible with copious amounts of body hair, slumping fatly in a track suit with a Star of David made up of rifles that the camera lingered over for some reason whenever he came into shot……some sort of message there?

He was later described as ‘an Israeli attack dog….he always has a price….what Jew doesn’t.’

Good old BBC, feeding the stereotype and making up a few new ones.

And what to make of the Stein group’s logo?  Looks remarkably like a rocket launch from Gaza with someone cheering it on.  Just a coincidence I’m sure…..it must mean something else entirely……

Have been watching some ‘Jonathan Creek’ recently…has a lot in common with THW….pure hocum….though at least all the actors in ‘Jonathan Creek’ know it is hocum…only a few of the ones in THW seem to have realised they’re in Pantoland.

Some previous thoughts on ‘The Honourable Woman’:

Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense

Blick’s tale is a shallow, naive allegory of the Middle East…the father is the old Israel, or rather the Israel that it still is, ‘armed and dangerous’, whilst the daughter, Nessa Stein, that ‘Honourable Woman’, is the new Israel, or rather the ‘one state’ solution where the walls are taken down and there are no barriers any more between the Jews and the Palestinians and everyone lives happily everafter.

Ham And Hamas

The Honourable Woman though has its place in the BBC battle order…..it is a ‘weapon’ of war as much as any gun or bomb…it is a ‘smart bomb’ delivered into thousands, if not millions, of homes around the world bearing not high explosives but a poisonous message….a message delivered by the BBC on behalf of Hamas, Fatah and all those who wish to ‘wipe Israel off the map’.

An interesting Tweet from the BBC’s Danahar…apparently the extreme Islamist radicals of Hamas are nothing like Al Qaeda or ISIS…..I imagine this Tweet can be placed alongside Bowen’s ‘moderate’ Muslim Brotherhood assertion….Hamas being part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The BBC’s Danahar having a double whammy here…defending Hamas, as seems to be an urgent priority for BBC correspondents just now ( ‘It’s very important to note that Hamas didn’t fire the first rockets on Friday’ Yolande Knell told us….just many of the rest)

Donnison is on the case as well….

…and Danahar is having a go at Netanyahu as well….seemingly another favourite target that BBC journos like to try and ‘Fisk’.

Douglas Murray in the Spectator thinks different….and the radicals are on our streets right now:

The black flag of ISIS is flying in London

When historians look back on Europe in this era, they will rub their eyes in disbelief. ISIS is carrying out actual genocide, ethnic and religious cleansing on the people of Syria and Iraq. Their exact ideological soul-mates in Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda are doing everything they can to set light to the same region. Right now the western states are finally talking of intervening in Iraq to stop ISIS wiping out the ancient Yazidi and Christians communities of Iraq. Yet we do nothing to stop the same murderous ideology thriving here.

Instead another pattern is set. When we see this disgusting ideology at work, as we have done for the last month, much of Europe turns its hatred onto the Saturday people for defending themselves. Israel continues to defend itself. And we may do something to hold back ISIS in Iraq. But what will we do in our societies when we finally realise that behind the flag of Hamas is the black flag of jihad, and that after failing to stand up for the Saturday people there will be fewer people left to stand up for the Sunday people?

Most importantly, what will we do when we wake up to the fact that, far from being in some neighbouring or far-flung country, we have allowed the enemy to plant itself deep inside our own countries?

Note this rather terrifying revelation….that senior Tories are ready to pander to Islamist extremists and tailor our foreign policy to suit them:

Tory minister: Govt ‘failure’ on Gaza is sowing seeds of General Election defeat

I’ve just spoken to another Tory minister who is unhappy, and worried particularly about the effects that this will have on the Conservatives’ chances next year. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the minister tells me:

‘Warsi knows that our failure in Gaza will damage any change of our Northern marginals and South East Lutons and Watfords. The Lib Dems will probably now keep Muslim voters who might have switched over to Labour and got us a gain. I fear Dave might have sown the seeds of our defeat at the General Election.’

 

The BBC of course has itself long pandered to those same Muslim activists and pushed the narrative they favour, that foreign policy drives the radicalisation of Muslims.

Jon Donnison helps that along with his views on the Gaza conflict and who is ‘guilty’ of helping Israel:

Happily Donnison is being shipped out…but only to be replaced by Connolly:

The saddest thing about Donnison’s emotive manipulation and exploitation of injured or homeless Gazan children used to undermine Israel is that he has no intention of examining the real roots of their problems….that these childrens’ lives are a long misery with blighted futures, interspersed with enormous violence and danger, because of the policies of the terrorist groups he and his fellow travellers of the BBC turn a blind eye to….indeed sometimes even shed a tear for….One expert on ‘conflict resolution’ on 5Live today (12:50) stated that 92% of Gazans wanted a truce and were being failed by their leadership…Dominic Laurie, standing in for Fogarty, ignored that rather important point.

These children, and generations of children before them, could have been living completely different lives had the Palestinian leadership decided to spend their time, energy and money on building a Palestinian state, an economy, a society.

Instead they fund terror and tunnels and the BBC quietly applauds them and their ‘resistance’.

Bright futures destroyed by pandering to a dream which turned into a nightmare.

We had a look at the casualty figures from Gaza two weeks ago (H/T Pounce) and based on the figures available then it looked like 61% of the casualties were fighting age men (18 to 60 years old…of course there will also be many under 18 who are fighters and not all men in the age bracket will be fighters.)

The BBC refrained from doing any analysis on these figures and preferred instead to give us casualty numbers as provided by Hamas, via the UN….importantly these figures didn’t make an honest effort to discriminate between possible militants and others.

I have heard a lot of the reporting from Gaza by the BBC and what has been missing from much of it is any sense that the Israelis are fighting ‘someone’….the reports tell us the Israelis have been attacking or bombarding or bombing Gaza but don’t explain why….Hamas seem to have been erased from the picture…..if the Israelis are firing the must be firing for a reason, at something…the BBC gives the impression that they are firing ‘indiscriminately’ …Sheila Fogarty herself admitted that people had the idea that Israel was just ‘carpet bombing’ Gaza…..wonder where they got that idea?

Maybe those ideas will start to change as the BBC starts to report the truth about what the Israeli army  has been targeting…….

The BBC gave Hamas a months worth of priceless anti-Israeli PR by quoting those figures unchecked…but it has finally come clean and started to question the data….

Caution needed with Gaza casualty figures

 War zones are not easy places to collect statistics.

In the Gaza conflict, most news organisations have been quoting from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which leads a group of humanitarian organisations known as the Protection Cluster.

Its recent report said that as of 6 August, 1,843 Palestinians had been killed and 66 Israelis and one Thai national since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on 8 July.

There has been some research suggesting that men in general are more likely to die in conflict than women, although no typical ratio is given.

Nonetheless, if the Israeli attacks have been “indiscriminate”, as the UN Human Rights Council says, it is hard to work out why they have killed so many more civilian men than women.

An analysis by the New York Times looked at the names of 1,431 casualties and found that “the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll. They are 9% of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, but 34% of those killed whose ages were provided.”

“At the same time, women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71% of the population and 33% of the known-age casualties.”

Some of the conclusions being drawn from them [the figures] may be premature.

The IDF estimates:

Israeli military officials said 750-1,000 Hamas and other gunmen had been killed in the fighting as of Tuesday, August 5.

The big question is will any of this ‘caution’ filter down to inform the other BBC reports?

I guess not…..

Ironically as the BBC publishes the above it also publishes this…claiming only 166 of the casulaties are ‘militants’:

Gaza conflict: The hundreds who lost their lives

If a Conservative politician had come out with the line that they would like to see a major UK city “Free of Pakistanis”, the BBC would (rightfully) be all over it. Yet when leading Cat impersonator and Israeli-hater George Galloway comes out with the contention that Bradford should be “Israeli-free” (by which he really means Jew Free) the BBC let it pass without that much comment. Maybe they agree with not so gorgeous George? I also note that Jew hating LibDem David Ward suggested than ‘the ban” on Israel should be UK wide. Again, a certain amount of obfuscation here but is he really saying he wants Jews out of the UK? The BBC didn’t pursue that line, too busy praising Nick Clegg when he suggests “the war on drugs” has failed and we need to legalise narcotics. Ah well – BBC priorities.

BBC playing games about Gaza again. It screeches “Israel air strikes resume in Gaza amid rockets”.….so creating the impression that those bad JOOOOOOOS are back to their business of killing innocent women and children. You have to read a little more carefully to see that it was HAMAS that refused to continue the temporary truce and it was Hamas that attacked Israel with several rockets this morning.

Here you go, a new OPEN THREAD for the weekend. Detail the bias here please.

The curious silence of the Twitterati and all that.

Remember when Nigel Farage said he might prefer to have a house full of Germans next door rather than a house full of Romanians and the world went mad with opportunistic politicians and media luvvies telling us that Farage was a racist…his ‘racial slur’ deemed ‘deeply offensive’?

A couple of months later and all that indignant self righteousness seems to have vanished, the politicians and luvvies can’t muster so much as a raised eyebrow now when a racial group is grievously slurred and accused of ‘social cleansing’……not only that but when once the threat to London was angry young black men burning up the city:

….apparently this is the new great threat….the white hipster…..coz they only come in white apparently…. with beards and bobble hats…the new Taliban….

…as you can see they love a good fire…..

Pauline Pearce says gentrification has left Hackney a divided place…….

White hipsters, not black looters, are now threatening post-riots London

Three years ago, I shouted down young men as they burnt cars on the streets of Hackney, where I live. Now they come in beards and bobble hats instead.

Standing outside the retro bars and clubs, and, I’m sorry to say, they are all white. It’s impossible not to notice.

 When I look at my community now, I still don’t see anybody speaking up. What we need to do is say we are all one and we need to make it work together.

London belongs to all of us. Not just those who can afford to pay £5 for a cappuccino.

I’m guessing these guys aren’t white……..

…but they are hipsters.

Good that people have got over that kneejerk urge to shout down anyone as racist who says anything in any way controversial that they don’t want to hear and can come to terms intellectually and morally with racist comments…..though it does help if they are made by a black person.

Good that the BBC has grown up enough to ignore such a ‘racial slur’ and realise that saying white people are socially cleansing blacks out of parts of London is merely real politik and the claim that white hipsters are a greater threat to London than rioters and looters is an ‘interesting idea’.

Good that the BBC doesn’t waste any of our licence money whipping up a witch hunt against Pauline for her Little Hackneylander views having learnt its lesson when it failed to demonise Nigel Farage.

Personally I think Hipsters just want to have fun:

….oh hang on…hang on a mo!!!  There’s black people in there enjoying themselves…don’t they know they’ve been ‘socially cleansed’….and what’s that……reggae, hip hop, soul, funk and R&B music…damn….there ain’t nothing for black people…oppressed and excluded once again from society by white colonialism.

Maybe she’s right after all:

Islamic State’s new icon is a hipster jihadi

BBC foreign correspondent Matthew Price:

"Israel, as a colony, cannot continue to exist" – interesting article – http://t.co/NISKmAf1rk

— Matthew Price (@BBCMatthewPrice) August 6, 2014

Just a couple of snippets from the article that Price finds so “interesting”:

It is time to call a spade a spade: Israel, as a colony, is a constant source of violence and conflict. It is not an ex-colony, nor is it an accepted part of the world for many. It is a territory in the Middle East under Western occupation, which possesses no political legitimacy now, nor can it ever acquire such legitimacy in the future because it has no raison d’être and cannot create one…

What I propose here is that the flow of millions of Zionists to Palestine be reversed. That the Zionists who emigrated to Israel should be offered a peaceful and generously compensated return to where they came from or the choice of any other destination. And that the descendants of emigrants who were born in Israel be invited to return to the countries of their parents/grandparents, or to go somewhere else as they choose.

Just wow. And if this is what BBC journalists are happy to promote on social media, imagine what they’re saying to each other off line.